TAMPA \u2013 When the Pittsburgh Steelers limped into the locker room at halftime trailing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by double digits Sunday afternoon, they did so without their head coach.<\/p>\n
Mike McCarthy spent the 13-minute intermission on the Steelers\u2019 sideline having his foot examined in the medical tent, saying he \u201cjust had to shake it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t recommend it,\u201d McCarthy said following the 26-19 overtime win at Raymond James Stadium. \u201cIt\u2019s really hot in there. I got my foot stepped on. We have a really good medical staff. I just communicated from the tent to the locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCarthy said that communication came through assistant head coach Joe Whitt Jr., who coaches the secondary.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe Whitt did a great job. Joe has head coach responsibilities normally, so they didn\u2019t miss a beat,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cAdjustments were made. Halftime is quick, anyway. Frankly, the biggest part was really just getting the offensive conversations to me when the guys came out. I thought the guys did what they needed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said halftime can be \u201cdisjointed,\u201d with players eating bananas and sandwiches and talking amongst themselves, but people were wondering what was going on when they realized that McCarthy didn\u2019t come into the locker room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a whole lot of stuff that happens at halftime \u2014 at least, so far with this staff,\u201d Rodgers said, noting that for him it\u2019s mostly 30-second talks with offensive coordinator Brian Angelichio and quarterbacks coach Tom Arth. \u201cSo, it wasn\u2019t a whole lot different at halftime. It was still the same chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
When word spread that McCarthy was OK, it was a relief to Rodgers. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s from Pittsburgh,\u201d Rodgers said, \u201cso he toughed it out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2013 When the Pittsburgh Steelers limped into the locker room at halftime trailing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-309640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}